The Top 15 Things to Do This Week

One Day We’ll All Be Dead and None of This Will Matter Reading Scaachi Koul writes about culture for BuzzFeed. Her new, much-chatted-about collection of comic essays is about growing up in an Indian-Canadian family. Tonight she’ll be in conversation with Seattle’s own Lindy West, who, as you may have heard, knows a thing or two about comedic essays. Seattle Public Library, 1000 Fourth Ave., 386-4636, spl.org. Free. All ages. 7 p.m. PAUL CONSTANT

Keeanga Yamahtta-Taylor Princeton African-American studies professor, Jacobin contributor, and activist Keeanga Yamahtta-Taylor has become one of the most clear-eyed political strategists, thinkers, and writers in the wake of the topsy-turvy 2016 presidential election. Her book From #BlackLivesMatter to Black Liberation analyzes the movement that has pushed the issue of police violence to the foreground of American consciousness, and argues that it might serve as a flashpoint for “an even broader push for Black liberation.” Town Hall, 1119 Eighth Ave., townhall seattle.org. $5. All ages. 7:30 p.m. Update: Tonight’s appearance has been canceled. KELTON SEARS

June 1,Thursday

Interrupting Whiteness The whole idea of PechaKucha is that speakers simultaneously talk and show 20 slides for 20 seconds each. It’s a fun high-wire act of a public-speaking spectacle. Tonight’s event is all about investigating the question of being white as it pertains to privilege, injustice, outreach, and responsibility. Seattle Public Library, 1000 Fourth Ave., 386-4636, spl.org. Free. All ages. 7 p.m. PC

The Child and the Spells Adored for its opalescent score but, thanks to its vast cast of anthropomorphized characters, a challenge to stage, Maurice Ravel’s 1925 45-minute opera L’enfant et les sortilèges (The Child and the Spells) lives happily in concert performance. This weekend, Ludovic Morlot leads the Seattle Symphony in this tale (the libretto is by Colette) of a young boy and a menagerie come to life. Composer Ned Rorem, a fervent Ravellian, described the opera thus: “Ravel evoked, in a triumph of vocal and instrumental onomatopoeia, the cries and whispers of [the] forest, the purrs and squeaks and coos and buzzing of the squirrels and bats and doves and dragonflies.” Benaroya Hall, Third Ave. & Union St., 215-4747, seattlesymphony.org. $37–$122. 7:30 p.m. (8 p.m. Sat.) GAVIN BORCHERT

June 2,Friday

Volcano Reading Neil Matheson will discuss how geography affects the way we puny humans live our lives. We celebrate when we can see Mount Rainier on sunny days, for example, but beneath that celebration is also an understanding that the mountain could in theory kill us all at any moment. Elliott Bay Book Company, 1521 10th Ave., 624-6600, elliottbaybook.com. Free. All ages. 7 p.m. PC

The Gas Trap If you notice a 25-foot-high bubble attached to a car’s tailpipe and filled with white smoke at Westlake Plaza this week, don’t be alarmed: It’s art. But also, do be alarmed: It’s art about the climate. Local nonprofit Coltura is on a mission to make America gasoline-free by 2040, and so co-created the spectacle to spur conversation around the things we’d rather not think about. Dancers inside the bubble pantomime the consequences of an exhaust-filled world. Westlake Center Plaza, 400 Pine St., coltura.org. Free. All ages. 5:30 & 6:45 p.m. SARA BERNARD

June 3,Saturday

The Inheritance of Shame Reading As a child, Peter Gajdics lived through six long years of a psychiatrist’s attempts to “convert” him from gay to straight. His memoir is about coming through so-called conversion therapy and learning to love yourself after being exposed to so much rigorous institutionalized hatred. (Reminder: Mike Pence still thinks conversion therapy is a good idea.) Elliott Bay Book Company, 1521 10th Ave., 624-6600, elliottbaybook.com. Free. All ages. 7 p.m. PC

Caturday According to Facebook, nearly 498 people [at press time] are interested in coming together to give their housecats a little taste of Seattle sunshine. Whether the first-ever Caturday, which invites cat owners to bring them to the park, is a good idea or not, you’ll have to wait and see—but if all goes well it might just be the cutest event in the history of Seattle. Cat attire is encouraged. Cal Anderson Park, calanderson park.org. Free. All ages. 1:30 p.m. AGATHA PACHECO

Wanda Jackson Not every Saturday afternoon can you spend with a 1950s rockabilly legend, but Rock and Roll Hall of Famer Wanda Jackson is still gracing stages at 79. With 32 albums under her belt, the Oklahoman has no lack of material to draw from. And it will all sound extra-sweet with a glass of the pink stuff as part of Charles Smith Winery’s first Jet City Rosé tasting. With John Doe, The Dusty 45s. Charles Smith Wines Jet City, 1136 S. Albro Pl., charlessmithwines.com, 745-7456. $25–$30. 1 p.m. GREGORY SCRUGGS

Filastine Former Seattle troublemaker Grey Filastine, who soundtracked the 1999 WTO protests with his Infernal Noise Brigade marching band, has been holed up in Barcelona for many years. That makes a local appearance extra-special, all the more so at a DIY venue as he supports a new album, Drapetomania, with his longtime collaborator, Indonesian vocalist Nova. With a mix of psychedelic electronics and post-Asiatic instruments, the duo conjure futuristic digital folk on the edges of capitalism’s collapse. Location and time released with ticket purchase. typonexus-filas tine-nova.bpt. $12–$60. GS

The Dumb Girl of Portici Back in 1916 the world of ballet overlapped with silent film, and made a little miracle. Anna Pavlova, whose celebrity stretched so far beyond her home in Russian ballet that eventually a dessert was named for her, met Lois Weber, a pioneering female director, and starred in The Dumb Girl of Portici, in which her dance ability was translated into the hyper-physical acting style of early silent film. We have almost no extended footage of Pavlova dancing, but we do have this movie; in it, her gift for kinetic narrative shows us a slice of why she enchanted us then and still fascinates us now. SIFF Cinema Uptown, 511 Queen Anne Ave. N., siff.net. $14. 11:30 a.m. SANDRA KURTZ

Northwest author Langdon Cook has written at length about mushrooms. Now he’s turning his eye to another regional staple: salmon. (Press materials call salmon “perhaps the last great wild food.”) His new book is about the history of humanity’s relationship to salmon and the environmental impact that the salmon industry has had on the land. Town Hall, 1119 Eighth Ave., 652-4255, townhallseattle.org. $5. All ages. 7:30 p.m. PC

Mountain Goats In one respect, John Darnielle is sticking to what works with his band’s latest, Goths, once again putting center stage the pitiable, romantic outsider. In this case, he is offering a kaleidoscopic view of goth identities that travel far from Hot Topic. Musically, the album is a revelation, showing the outfit fully divorced from its strummy indie-folk beginnings and into something more musically complex, interesting, and moving—though not at all gothlike. It’s weird like that. The Showbox, 1426 First Ave., 628-3151. $28.50. All ages. 8:30 p.m. MARK BAUMGARTEN

June 6,Tuesday

iji There is something decidedly summery about the music created by iji principle Zach Burba. Not the kind of artificially sweetened summer pop that mischaracterizes the season as one of inexhaustible energy, the music of his ever-rotating outfit is lusciously languid, his lightly pulsing guitar lines leaking out of the speakers as he sings sweetly about this brilliant, exhausting life, sensitive as a fresh sunburn. With Fish Boy, Sundae Crush. Sunset Tavern, 5433 Ballard Ave. N.W., 784-4880. $8. 21 and over. 8 p.m. MB